


To Hell in a Handbasket

by sinfuldesire_archivist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drama, During Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-06
Updated: 2006-08-06
Packaged: 2018-09-03 15:13:54
Rating: Teen & Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8718718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinfuldesire_archivist/pseuds/sinfuldesire_archivist
Summary: once upon a time: Tell me a story, Sam says when heâ€™s little and curled up beside his big brother with eyes shut tight against the moon peeking through the window blinds.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the Sinful Desire archivists: this story was originally archived at [Sinful-Desire.org](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Sinful_Desire). To preserve the archive, we began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2016. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [Sinful Desire collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/sinfuldesire/profile).

**To Hell in a Handbasket.**  
Supernatural. Sam/Dean. R. Blame the bizarre imagery on too many years of overanalyzing literature in English classes. Also in Chinese [here](http://hk.netsh.com/eden/bbs/789/html/tree_6923837.html), thanks to LPuhuh.  
  
  
**1:** _once upon a time_  
  
_Tell me a story,_ Sam says when he’s little and curled up beside his big brother with eyes shut tight against the moon peeking through the window blinds.  
  
Dean’s never been much of a storyteller, but he does his best, makes it up as he goes along, tells Sammy a story about two brave knights and the forty dragons they kill to save seven princesses locked away in seven towers. His little brother always falls asleep before the princesses are safe, but that’s okay. Dean isn’t really sure how the story ends yet.  
  
Sam never asks Dean to start from the middle and fill in the gaps, so he always begins with the beginning, the same chapter of the same fairytale, and in a way, it’s comforting.  
  
This, at least, they keep constant.  
  
  
**2:** _never, forever_  
  
_Always._ Sam whispers it to himself while no one’s around to hear and he should be asleep. _Always._ It feels strange on his tongue, foreign, like a new French word he’s just stumbled across in his homework and doesn’t yet understand completely.   
  
But then Dean kisses him and the odd feel goes away, and they smile at each other in the dark, because that’s what people do when they have a secret.  
  
Sam doesn’t moan so much as he whimpers, eager, needy sounds in his throat, and his brother cups his face in his hands and murmurs, _Hush, Sammy. Quiet._  
  
And he falls silent, always.  
  
Once, it occurs to him that _always_ is an awfully long time, and way too certain for them. He does his best to forget it as soon as he can.  
  
  
**interlude:** _trust_  
  
When Sam turns fifteen, John Winchester decides it’s time for his sons to take charge of themselves and he starts getting them a separate room whenever they can afford it. He never knows what goes on behind closed doors, and maybe that’s one of the disadvantages of raising his children as good liars.  
  
Then again, maybe it’s the opposite.  
  
  
**3:** _nox_  
  
He dreams of drowning almost as often as he dreams of burning now, and there’s a voice he tries not to recognize that whispers in his ear as he fights for breath. When he’s younger, it’s Dean’s voice, only it’s not. When he gets to Stanford, he knows it’s Jessica’s, too, and he tries to pretend it won’t take her. Because the voice is neither and both of them all at once, and it speaks with vengeance and pain and death more than actual words.  
  
_Baptized in the Hellfire, Devil’s child, it’s never been them, only you. They die and scream and it’s always your fault. Everyone you love is damned._  
  
He falls into rivers of blood and chokes on his own before he realizes it’s really theirs. In dreams, you know things like that. A million ghost hands hold him down, cover him, squeezing at his throat and ripping at his skin.  
  
_They’ll all leave you and you’ll burn alive while their flesh decays. Razor blades in the apples to cut their throats, and Death above their brows and they’ll drown in your tears and you in their blood. Knives on their flesh, they tear and they bleed and they cry, and it’s you._  
  
Red water closes over his head and he yells, hears only a gurgle and he can see Their eyes, empty and cold and dead and there’s blood in his mouth, copper filling his lungs.  
  
_You’re wrong, your whole being, and you’ll kill them. You’ve killed them all._  
  
He blinks his eyes open and can still taste metal on his lips and Dean is there beside him, his weight comforting and warm and alive. He senses his brother awake and whispers groggily, _Go back to sleep, Sammy, s’just a dream,_ and he never opens his eyes.  
  
  
**4:** _nostalgia_  
  
_I hate being back here,_ Dean tells him bitterly after Lawrence, and Sam nods and gently takes the keys from his brother’s hand.  
  
He doesn’t say the same. He’s not sure if it’s true, anyway, no matter how much he misses that one, brief taste of normal.  
  
  
**interlude:** _on paper wings_  
  
In his worst moments, the times when his fingers itch to pick up the phone and just dial, he can’t calm himself by repeating in his head that homesickness is for girl scouts as sleep-away camp and that they never had home, not really, because they lived everywhere and nowhere all at once.  
  
Those times, he tries to distract himself with books and essays and lecture notes. The volumes in the library are old and dusty and the page edges are weathered and rough but soft to the touch and he remembers.  
  
His fingertips think of Dean’s skin, weathered and calloused but young and alive and Sam feels chilled and almost goes for the hard plastic of the phone again.  
  
  
**5:** _city of dis_  
  
_Are we going to Hell?_  
  
He only asks once, one of the last times before he tries to leave Dean behind, and his brother takes a long time to reply, fingers busy tracing circles and ripples across bare skin.   
  
_I don’t think we belong there,_ he says, and Sam feels comforted. _Not yet._  
  
Yet. So when?  
  
  
**6:** _toll-free helpline, only 39¢_  
  
The second time Dean pulls his baby brother out of the fire, he’s terrified Sam will end up broken.  
  
The fourth night after, he reaches out and Sam pushes his hands away, pulls a tee-shirt over his head despite the broken A/C, and turns his back before he goes to sleep.  
  
Sam barely speaks for a week, and then on the eighth night, he takes Dean’s hand and pulls him near, closes his eyes and doesn’t say anything, but Dean can hear him anyway. _Help me, love me, take me, heal me._  
  
He tries.  
  
  
**7:** _fairytale_  
  
Seven princesses are locked in seven towers. The forty dragons die horrid, bloody deaths but the two brave knights get sidetracked and pull over along the way.  
  
They take to each other and realize things are easier if it’s just them, if there’s no Hollywood kiss for a stranger, because outside is complicated and they—alone but together—make the only kind of sense they know or care for.  
  
The princesses die alone in their towers, waste away lonely. Nobody ever comes to tell them that the story is over.


End file.
